Capitola Book Cafe fighting to stay open

Capitola Book Cafe employees, from left to right, Don Doggett, Megan Heller, Lucas Morris, Tish Wolf, Melinda Powers and Wendy Mayer-Lochtefeld. (Photo by Todd Guild).

CAPITOLA — The Capitola Book Café is a snug little store tucked into an otherwise nondescript mid-county strip mall.

Opened in 1980, the bookstore has been a Capitola mainstay for more than three decades, but now the owners are fighting for the store’s life. If an ongoing fundraising campaign isn’t successful, the bookstore could close by the end of June.

The store is a place where parents and their children can come to the cozy children’s section, sit in an overstuffed armchair and read together; where people go to browse before catching a movie at the theater next door or sit and read the newspaper in the small, well-appointed cafe as music plays in the background.

Children have been coming for years to the shop’s story time, and the employees have been known to bring books into classrooms for outreach programs.



The public is invited to Capitola Book Cafe’s next fundraising event on Friday, June 22.

The free Local Author Extravaganza starts at 7:30 p.m.

Donations to the Survive & Thrive Campaign will be welcome

Attendees also have the opportunity to attend a meet the Authors champagne reception before the event from 6:30-7:15 p.m.

$40 - tickets are $40 ANS will be available at the store or online at www.capitolabookcafe.com

The event will be emceed by local author Wallace Baine and will feature the following local authors.

Nancy Abrams

Martha Alderson

Greg Archer

Geoffrey Dunn

Karen Joy Fowler

Harvey Gotliffe

Kathryn Gualtieri

Jana Marcus

Thad Nodine

Joel Primack

Fred Reiss

Rocky Snyder

Stephen Snyder

Claudia Sternbach

Robert Sward

Dan White

Jon Young

•••



The Capitola Book Café is in the Kings Plaza Shopping Center at 1475 41st Avenue
in Capitola. To donate to the “Survive and Thrive” campaign, call 462-4415, visit



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